Not Ready to Go Home

Hey! How's everybody's week going? We had a pretty good week, of course Elder Bustamante was transferred and so now I'm with Elder Kowalk again! He's grown a lot, I'm really excited to serve with him for the next 6 weeks. So Dardanian was baptized this week, and it went really well. David is getting married on Saturday, so the first big obstacle is finally out of the way, now he just needs to quit smoking and he'll be all ready for baptism. We set a baptismal date this week with Chris, our one investigator we have in the singles branch (pretty much all of our work is in Bentonville 1st ward, though we cover both wards) but then he didn't show up for church yesterday so we'll have to figure out what's going on there. He's awesome though. This week was crazy because Monday and Tuesday we were in Tulsa for ZLC and then Thursday was transfers, so we were very busy. Unfortunately lost a lot of proselyting time, but that's life in leadership... Elder Kowalk and I have had a lot of success already though both in the lessons we've had and especially with tracting, we've found some really great people the last few days. Again, I'm very excited for this transfer. It's kind of scary though, I've got so much I would like to accomplish here and so many plans for this area and what we're going to do, but I'm starting to realize how little time I have to accomplish those goals! I don't feel like I have enough time left to do the things I need to do. It's a very sad feeling... I'll just have to tell President I'm not going home next month. :) Sorry everyone.

With Elder Kowalk

Baptism of Dardanian "Pwordes" Alex Hadley on 9 Oct 2010 with parents,
sister Destiny and brother Dan ("Newie")

10/4 e-mail: General Conference / Last Transfer

Following is Elder Goodale's e-mail from October 4th; sorry I'm so late in posting again!

We had a great week. General Conference was amazing! As usual. I've never been disappointed by a General Conference yet... scary though that that was my last one (as a full-time missionary). My last transfer starts next week! So transfer calls came and Elder Bustamante is leaving, which we expected but it's still sad. He's a really great missionary. The cool thing though is that my new companion is Elder Kowalk! If you remember I served with him for one transfer way back in Miami. It's crazy we are getting to serve together again, I'm excited. It'll be fun because last time we served together I had been out 6 months and he had been out 3 months, so we were both brand new and had no idea what we were doing. We just went out and worked! So it'll be fun serving together again, this time as Zone Leaders, at the end of our missions, with all the extra knowledge we've gained. I haven't seen him since then, so it'll be cool to see how much he's grown. It's going to be a great transfer too, we've got a lot going on. Pwordes is going to be baptized on Saturday, and this week we set another baptismal date for a man named Doug for November 13. We've only taught him once, but he's really cool. He recently moved up here from Mississippi. David (investigator) and one of the church members are going to be married on October 16. Then this one family came to a session of conference, they are doing awesome! They are the part member family I told you about. We were able to get Austin to cub scouts on Tuesday, and he's planning on going back every week. My main goal before I leave is to help that whole family to be baptized. I'm excited for them. What else happened this week... We went and did service Friday morning at a place called Helping Hands, we're going to be going there every week now. It'll be good. The only service we've been able to find thus far has been at the Library, and this Helping Hands thing will be a lot better. How has the weather been there? It's been COLD here! Yesterday it didn't get above 60 all day, and this morning when we left to go work out at 5:45, we had to scrape the ice off our windows! It's way to early to have to use an ice scraper! Especially in Arkansas! I think it's supposed to warm up a little this week though. I was surprised to have lows in the 30s this early in the season. So for exercise here there is a member family, the Fife's, who have their own personal gym right on their property that is really nice. And it's a totally private place. So 3 days a week we get up at 5:45 and go work out there, then 3 days a week we go running, I've been doing a minimum of 3 miles, sometimes more. I feel great, the best I've felt on my mission. I love you all! Have a great week!

9/27 e-mail: Beautiful NW Arkansas

I'm sorry I'm two weeks late in posting e-mails from Elder Goodale. This one here is from his e-mail of September 29th. In the first paragraph, he's extolling the virtues of NW Arkansas, telling me I should look for a job there. Maybe I should!

Northwest Arkansas is a really great place. It's cheap, it's beautiful (I'm sure you've never dated a girl like that...), and the church is really, really strong here. The city of Centerton, which borders Bentonville, is called "little Provo."

The work is going awesome here too, at least in Bentonville 1st Ward. We've got a bunch of great investigators right now that I talked about in my email to mom. And it was cool we went on splits with the bishopric on Wednesday, I went with the Bishop and Elder Bustamante went with one of his counselors. Bishop Chandler and I went to go visit those 2 part member families, and we had really great lessons with both of them. Bishop was way excited because those are two families that aren't on the records, that we found through our own efforts, that are going to lead to several baptisms. He was very excited to go to both of them and then when we had such awesome, spiritual lessons with both of them it was obvious that the Bishop really trusts Elder Bustamante and I now. That's not to brag or anything, It's just awesome that we really have such strong trust and support now from him. That will help alot, and increase on the already great things that are going on here. I'm very excited.

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This next one is from an e-mail he sent to Michelle that day, as well:

Things are going well here, we have another baptism set for October 9, his name is Portes. He's Pompeiian (spelling?), basically he's from the Micronesian Islands. Remember way back in Miami I was saying there were a lot of Chuukese people? Well Pompeii is another island very close by. Both are part of Micronesia. He's pretty cool. We've got a bunch of others that are close too. There is a part member family that I may have mentioned to you before. There are a couple of other part member families, as well, that are also making a lot of progress. I anticipate Hannah, who is 16, and Nathan, who is 12, both having baptismal dates this week and we're hoping also that another family (mom Andrea, 10 year old Alicia and 9 year old Austin) will have dates soon as well. I would like to see a total of 10 baptisms in this area, which is very very possible with those 7 I just talked about plus the baptism we had last week. That would make 8 that I am very confident will happen, and we have a very large teaching pool right now, and still finding more, with several others that very well could be baptized before I leave in November. I'm really excited for the work that is going on right now.

Baptisms / Visiting GA

Brother Scott and Jonathan

We had stake conference this week. Elder Jonathon C. Roberts of the 70 was there. (the same one that was at stake conference in St. Robert 6 months ago. He's our area 70)
It was awesome. We had a good week. Set a baptismal date with Mary. Also Jonathon was baptized yesterday. It went really well. Love you!

Elder Bustamante, Jonathan Garrett and Elder Goodale
September 19, 2010

Work Amongst the Marshallese

Dear Family,

      Hey everyone! We had a pretty good week, a lot of disappointments but a lot of great things happened too. Our main emphasis this week was on getting people to church, we really expended a lot of effort there. That was the theme of several of our lessons with investigators, we had members present at almost every lesson, we did a couple of chapel tours, and we got really solid commitments out of everyone to be there. Yet out of 10 investigators that committed to be at sacrament meeting, only 3 came. It was a little disappointing, but hopefully we'll have several more next week. One couple that didn't make it are a Marshallese couple named Charles and Sabina, and tonight we are having a family home evening with them at the home of the Elders Quorum President and his wife. I'm really looking forward to that, I'm sure it will go really well. Another couple, Chris and Jessica (the ones that got married 2 weeks ago), also missed church but tomorrow night we are going to teach them in the home of one of their fellowshipper families and either later in the week or early next week we also hope to have them in another fellowshipper's home. So we're doing everything we can to help our investigators attend church and at the same time get integrated into the ward, and I'm sure we'll see the fruits of that very soon. On a positive note, Chris Jacob came for the second week in a row, and even said that at one point he started to get a little emotional. He felt the Spirit very strongly. We hope to set a baptismal date with him this week. His level of understanding isn't very high, but I think mainly because of the language barrier (he's also from the Marshall Islands, he is Charles; brother) because he is a very intelligent man and a very dedicated man. I'm really excited for the progress he is making. Jonathon is all set for his baptism this weekend, we have no concerns there, and then this week hopefully we'll be setting a baptismal date with a boy named Portes (I don't know if that is spelled right...) Hadley, who is from the island of Pompeii. It's really neat because Elder Bustamante served in the Marshallese Ward down in Springdale about a year ago, and his understanding of the culture and a tiny bit of the language has been instrumental as we are now teaching so many islanders. That's no coincidence, the Lord definitely has His master plan all worked out. Things have been slow in the singles branch that we cover for a while now, but recently we started teaching someone really great there. His name is Chris, he is in the Army and just recently returned from a deployment. Before getting deployed he was engaged to an LDS girl (out in North Carolina), but it didn't work out. He had come close to joining the church but never actually did, but is very interested in getting back on the path towards that goal, and ultimately to the temple. We just taught him for the first time a few days ago, and I'm very excited to start really working with him this week. Things are looking up here, right now Elder Bustamante and I are really trying to get the members more involved with the work we are doing, that's really one of our main goals right now, and we're finding that in order to accomplish all that we hope to on that front it's been taking a lot of effort and coordination. We are working on ways to be more organized and efficient, and already seeing great things happening with that as well. So we've been very, very busy, but I'll never complain about that! I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Goodale

Training / New Address

Elder Clinger and Elder Goodale August 26, 2010

Elder Goodale finally did send us his new address, as follows:

Elder Justin Goodale
900 NW A St.
Apt. A
Bentonville, AR 72712

And following is his e-mail from this past Monday (September 6, 2010).
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Dear Family,

     This has been an amazing week. We spent most of it in Tulsa, which has been incredible. They were training us on a new training system that the church is implementing. They are starting to teach this in the MTC in May of next year, so right now the leadership of all the missions in the world are getting trained on it so that when May comes all of the missions are caught up. All the Zone Leaders were in Tulsa last week getting the training, really it was like an extended Zone Leader Council, then all the District Leaders will be going down to Tulsa today and spending the week there. The whole thing is based on 8 new simplified lessons that the church will use to train missionaries from now on. They are designed to help us be better teachers, leave stronger commitments, and mainly to be more in tune with the Spirit. The 8 lessons that we are taught are:

 - The Doctrine of Christ - our missionary purpose
 - The Role of the Holy Ghost in Conversion
 - The Process of Receiving Revelation. (this one is divided into 3 lessons):
     - Revelation through Prayer
     - Revelation through the Book of Mormon
     - Revelation through Church Attendance
 - Teach People, Not Lessons
 - We Invite, They Commit, We Follow Up
 - How to Begin Teaching

It was amazing the principles we learned. It's all straight from Preach My Gospel, but presented in a way that makes us much more effective. Elder Bustamante and I only had a couple of days working in our area this week, but the few teaching opportunities we've had since being back we've put those things into practice with really amazing results. I'm so excited for this next week to really get all of this going! Unfortunately though, that's really all I have to report on because most of the week consisted of that training, but things are going great. I love you all!

Love,
Elder Goodale

Quick Update from Bentonville

Elder Goodale's e-mail home today was quite short, and he forgot to tell us his new address. So if you have anything to snail mail to him, please send it to the mission home address posted last week. I have posted some Bentonville links herein; with an estimated population of just under 34,000, it's the 11th largest city in Arkansas. I bet more than half of those are Wal-Mart employees, too! Bentonville is the county seat for Benton County (county website, Wikipedia entry); the county having just over 200,000 people. He's in the big city/county now!!! :-)  He mentions going to Tulsa for several days of training. According to Yahoo Maps, that's about a 125-mile drive. With his zone leader duties having him travel so much, it's a wonder that they get any work done in their own area!

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Dear Family,

     Hey everybody! This email is going to be really, really, really, short, so I apologize. We're leaving in about an hour to go to Tulsa, where we will be until Thursday night getting training and stuff. I won't go into too great detail on it because so many of the other missionaries that are out have talked about it in their emails and stuff quite a bit. But it is some pretty exciting stuff, basically 8 new simplified lessons that the church has come out with, nothing to replace the lessons we teach, these 8 lessons are actually aimed at us as missionaries, to basically make us more effective teachers. It's all stuff straight from Preach My Gospel, but now in a new format and a new way of training us on it. They've already given us Zone Leaders little tastes of it (we've known about it for a couple of months now, actually a few days before most other missions did. Elder Lynn G. Robbins introduced all the changes to us when he came and visited the mission and came to our Zone Leader Council) and I think this will make a huge difference in our missionaries. I guess in the spring they are going to start teaching these things in the MTC, so they are having all the missions do extensive training on it right now so that by the time the MTC starts teaching it all of the missions in the world are caught up and trained on it too. Christopher is picking a really, really great time to go out on a mission. I'm excited to see the difference this will make. Bentonville (city website, Wikipedia entry, Northwest Arkansas News(paper)) is good though, of course I've only been here a couple of days but it's been awesome. This is a really great area, the church is super strong down here, partially because this is the Wal-Mart headquarters and Wal-Mart really likes recruiting from BYU... It's an awesome area. We cover the Bentonville 1st ward and also Rogers 3rd, which is the singles branch. My companion is Elder David Bustamante, he's from Orlando, Florida, and he's awesome. I love him, I hope I get to finish my mission with him. He's been out 2 transfers less than me, so we came out pretty much around the same time. There is a lot of good stuff going on here, so I'm excited. It's been so long since I've been back in Arkansas, I'd forgotten how beautiful it is here... It's really nice. I love you all! Hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Goodale

Another Transfer!!!

Wow... so after probably what was close to a mission record for length of time in one area (7 months in St. Robert, MO), Elder Goodale transferred from there to Joplin, MO for three weeks, then emergency transferred to Springfield, MO for another three weeks, and this week he's transferring again! Between Michelle and I, we had a number of e-mail exchanges with him today, so I summarize below. Bentonville, AR, by the way, is the global headquarters for Wal-Mart, so maybe he'll teach some Wal-Mart executives!

We do not know his mailing address in Bentonville yet; we won't get that until next Monday. If you have anything to mail to him this week, please send it to the mission office:

Elder Justin Goodale
Oklahoma Tulsa Mission
5215 E 71st Street, Suite 300
Tulsa, OK 74136

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Justin's General E-Mails:

(1) Can you believe I'm getting transferred again? With this emergency transfer it's been really weird with just the 2 3-week areas in a row. I'm still figuring out where I am here and now I'm leaving again. It's tough because I know obviously I was here for a purpose but I'm trying to figure out what that is. It'll be nice knowing that I'm in Bentonville (Arkansas) semi-permanently (at least for 3 months...) I'll still be a Zone Leader out there, in the Rogers Zone.
(2) I'm a little bummed because there is actually a family getting baptized on Saturday, just two days after I leave! Their names are Chris and Candice, and their 9 year old daughter Taylor is also getting baptized that day. They have two other boys, but one is 7 and the other is 5. There are good things getting going here.
(3) We had another cool miracle this week from doing service. Last Tuesday we went and volunteered for a couple of hours at the Ozark Food Harvest (we'll be going again tomorrow morning, and basically every Tuesday) and there was a really cool kid there named DeMarcus. He's 17 and he goes to school with several of the members here. We were working with him and got to talking (it was actually him that brought up the gospel) and he was pretty interested and really cool. So the next night we talked to one of his good friends and told her she should invite him to church and see was he said. And he came! That was pretty cool. We're seeing a lot of awesome stuff with service.

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Question from Mom: That is cool (your transfer). You haven’t spent much time in Arkansas so it will be nice for you to do that. Do you think you can get a transfer to Kansas in before you go so that you can  be in every state? :-)

Reply from Elder Goodale: That would be nice, but I doubt it... Especially with only two transfers left... Actually I can guarantee you I won't because even if I do get transferred again (which I seriously, seriously, seriously doubt) I would stay a Zone Leader and there aren't any Zone Leader areas in Kansas. I consider myself a 4-stater, though, because when I served in Miami part of our area covered Kansas. In fact the second biggest town we covered was Baxter Springs, Kansas, and we worked there at least once, sometimes twice, a week. We also covered Treece Kansas, but we never worked there because it's like 3 blocks by 4 blocks. The whole town. But we did plenty of missionary work in Baxter Springs, so I think it counts as serving in Kansas. :)

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A follow-up to some sports/college, etc. discussions that he and I had been having. It's kind of odd... all his mission he's never talked about this stuff, but obviously with the end in near, he needs to start preparing for what's next. We've already done the application for him to go return to BSU, but he's asking us to facilitate different options, as well, just to have all the bases covered.

Elder Goodale: So I heard a rumor that Fresno St and Nevada were going to the Mountain West, and that the WAC is basically dissolving. That is one thing that may seriously keep me from going to Utah State. I mean their football team was already deterrent enough, but now as if the WAC wasn't enough of a joke already it's going to be really bad with Nevada, Fresno, and BSU gone. It'll be scary bad. I'm not sure I want to go to a WAC school.

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And finally, Elder Goodale's reply to Christopher submitting his mission papers and the question of where he thinks Christopher might get called to.

Elder Goodale: Wow. That's so amazing. That's really awesome. I'm going to guess the Philippines if he goes foreign and if he stays stateside I'm going to say Florida.

Multiple E-Mails

Today Michelle and I received multiple e-mails from Elder Goodale: one general e-mail to the family, two e-mails answering various questions that I had, and one e-mail to Michelle answering questions that she had. I post them all, below:
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Dear Family,
     Hey everybody I don't have a whole lot of time but we did have a pretty good week. We had Zone Conference this week, that was really good, there's a family that we're teaching that were all at church and they are doing pretty well. They are going to be baptized in the next couple of weeks. We've still been doing a lot of finding, but we've been having a lot of success with part member families here and just this week we sat down and talked about it and really revamped the way we work with members and I think we're going to see a lot of success from it. Nothing else is really new this week though... Sorry I didn't give you more detail. I love you!
Love,
Elder Goodale

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Springfield District Elder Fernelius, Elder Goodale, Elder Lichuk, Elder Shaw, Elder Noyce, Elder Smith, Elder Shirley, Elder Clinger, Sister Taylor, Sister Cluff

I had previously asked him in some of my letters about his duties as a Zone Leader, as compared to when I was a zone leader in Japan 25 years ago. There, we often got permission to stay up beyond our 10:30pm mandated bedtime, when we had to prepare for zone conferences. It looks like they don't do that. I also asked him about phone trees, when all the missionaries (on my mission) had to call in every night and report that they were in (most missionaries to DLs, DLs to ZLs, and ZLs to the mission office). Though Justin started out doing that, they have that no more. I also asked him what the religious demographics were like there. His replies:

To answer some of your other questions, we don't do nearly as much as you did with Zone Conferences. For one, one of the big agenda items at our monthly Zone Leader Councils is planning the next few Zone Conferences. So we all have a part in that and we get plenty of advanced notice. Second, the mission president and the assistants do most of the instructing. We usually do about an hour’s worth, though this last one we didn't even instruct at all. I conducted the meeting, and we had to make all the assignments (as far as like prayers, who would lead us in D&C 4 at the beginning, stuff like that) but other than that we don't have that much to do with that. We work the same hours as everybody else. :) That's something big the missionary department is trying to do worldwide, lessening the responsibilities of leaders so that they are more like other missionaries, I guess you could say. Mainly they've been really changing the role of an assistant to the mission president. They don't do nearly as much traveling now, they only go on a couple of exchanges a week (they used to be on exchanges every day, with lots and lots of different missionaries, now it's just once a transfer with each set of Zone Leaders) and they have their own proselyting area that they spend a significant amount of time in.

Also, when I first came out we had to call in like what you described, every night everyone called in to their district leaders, who reported in to the zone leaders once everyone had called them, and so forth. But about 6 months ago President Merkley received some instruction from the missionary department that said "destroy nightly phone calls." So he did. We don't do that anymore. Now they just call us on Sunday nights to report all of their key indicators.

In all my previous areas, we were the only missionaries in the city. Actually in each of my previous areas (before Joplin) we were the only ones in the county, and sometimes we would cover 2-3 counties. Our area was always just the ward boundaries. I've also never covered more than one ward (though some missionaries here do). In Springfield itself there are 5 family wards and then the University ward. The north half of the city is part of the Springfield stake, and also goes all the way out to Marshfield, Bolivar, Stockton, and Aurora Wards (you can look at a map for those, and remember those ward boundaries went way further than those towns themselves; for instance the Stockton Ward goes all the way up to Roscoe, MO). Then the south stake takes in the south side of Springfield (3rd, 4th and 5th wards) then down to Ozark, Ava, Branson and a Spanish Branch there, and actually all the way down to Mountain Home, Berryville, and Harrison, which are all in Arkansas. So the stakes are still pretty big. There are a decent amount of members here, it's not bad. They are a lot more heavily concentrated in the south half of Springfield. There are a little more Assembly of God here than in surrounding areas, there are a lot of them, but it's still mostly Baptist, just like all of this area.

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I had also asked him if now that he was in a big city, he was riding a bike now, or if he still had a car. His reply below; I don't know too many 21-year-old men whom would refer to a minivan as "sweet." :-)

We are actually in a sweet minivan, one of just 2 in the mission. We have a 2010 Dodge Caravan. We have one, and then the Zone Leaders down in Springdale, Arkansas have one. The reason those two sets of zone leaders get them is for carpooling to Tulsa for Zone Leader Council every month.

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And finally, Michelle had asked some questions about what they're doing every day, and his reply is below:

Sorry I didn't email much earlier. We basically do the same thing every day...

Things have been a little slow, just trying to find solid people to teach. We've had a lot of success with Part-member families, we're just trying to get some of them moving, and we've seen some amazing miracles doing service. Last Friday (the 6th) we stopped by this part members house who we had never met before. The husband, who was the non member, was ICE cold. He wouldn't even talk to us, and was very rude when he did. We finally were able to get him to go get his wife, and she told us that he's very against the church. We asked what service we could do and she jokingly said "well I need my yard mowed..." and before she could stop us or say anything else we grabbed the lawn mower and went to work. I mowed the front yard and Elder Clinger mowed the back, and while he was mowing I helped her put together a new table and chair set on the back patio. Her husband has some health issues related to a really bad car wreck, and so he can't do any of this stuff. As we did it, it made such a huge difference! It was like night and day! All of a sudden he was really respectful and appreciative, and we told him we would be back the next week to mow it again. So the next Friday we went by and he was outside and as we pulled up he came up and told us they were leaving and very sincerely said we'd be welcome to come back tomorrow. It had been very dry (it's been super hot, like up to 105 with very high humidity, creating a heat index sometimes as high as around 115-120) and so the grass hadn't grown any, so instead Saturday we helped pull weeds and do other stuff around the house, and while we did she cooked us dinner! Her husband was completely different. He started being really really friendly, talking our ears off, showing us some of his hobbies... it was awesome. The second service miracle was the next day (Saturday) we went and mowed the lawn of a less active families house. They hadn't been to church in forever, but the next day they came to church and they were there yesterday too, so two weeks in a row. Just from service. We've been trying to get some more organized service going, tomorrow morning we are going for 3 hours to volunteer at the Ozark Food Harvest. I'm very excited for that.

The package I sent home I just threw together as I was leaving Joplin, just the letters I received while I was there then a few things I didn't really want to pack and figured I would be fine without for my last 3 months. By the way, on Thursday the mission office called to confirm all my home info and where I'll be flying home to so that they could book my flight home. Scary! I love you. Have a great week.

Last-Minute Transfer / New Address in Springfield

Dear Family,

     Hey! So this week has been crazy to say the least. Some interesting twists. From last time I emailed, Tuesday was good, we were on exchanges with the Parsons (Kansas) Elders, and we had a really good day. We found some really really prepared people tracting, and got to teach a really awesome Part Member family. I'm so excited for the good things that are happening in Joplin. But then Wednesday morning we went up to Pittsburg, Kansas for a District Meeting, which is about an hour away from Joplin. While at that meeting, we got a phone call from President Merkley around 11:15. I couldn't answer, but about 5 minutes later I went out and checked the message and President addressed me specifically, which made it a heck of a lot scarier (turns out it was just because I'm the senior comp), and said that I needed to call him back IMMEDIATELY, that there was a sense of urgency about this. So I called him back and he said that Elder Conrad, who was serving in the Springfield 1st Ward, needed to go home for surgery and that he would be leaving in the morning and that one of the 3 of us would be taking his place in Springfield (some web links, added Dad: Official City Website, Wikipedia entry, city government website, News-Leader: local newspaper, Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce website). We then spent about 15 minutes discussing different options as far as who could go and what would be best for each of those missionaries as well as what would be best for the area. He then told us we needed to leave the District Meeting early and head home, and that he would let us know by the time we got back to Joplin which of us would be getting transferred. I told him that we could do that, the only problem was that we were planning on going on exchanges with the Pittsburg elders after the meeting so that one of us could do a baptism interview for them that night. He said ok well I'll pray about it right now and make a decision and I'll call you back as soon as I know. So Elder Day, Elder Anders, and I waited anxiously for about 5 minutes then President Merkley called us back and told me that I would be going to Springfield to replace Elder Conrad and that Elders Day and Anders would be staying together in Joplin. So Elder Anders and I, along with Elder Howe who we were exchanging with, left District Meeting a little bit early (though by now there wasn't a whole lot of time left) and headed back to Joplin. When we got home I had about two hours to pack before the Assistants would be able to get to Joplin, since it's about 2 hours from Tulsa, to pick me up and take me to my new area.

Willard District Elder Monson, Elder Dunn, Elder Peterson, Elder Bird, Elder Goodale, Elder Rich, Elder Clinger, Elder Sorensen

By the time I got to Springfield it was about 5:30 pm, but now I'm here! I'm serving with Elder Bryce Clinger, from Lewiston, Idaho. He's awesome. My new address is:

Elder Justin Goodale
1005 E. Division St. Apartment A
Springfield, MO 65803

     It's really interesting to see the Lord's hand in things. This was Elder Conrad's last transfer, and prior to this he had been serving as an Assistant to the Mission President for the last 9 months. As transfers neared, President told him that for sure he would be staying as an Assistant until the end of his mission. But when transfers came 3 weeks ago, two really surprising things happened. One, Elder Conrad was sent to Springfield to be a Zone Leader again for his last transfer. Second, there was an odd number of missionaries in the mission and so a need for a threesome somewhere. President did something I've never seen before and put 3 Zone Leaders together in Joplin 1st. None of us were sure why there were 3 zone leaders there, but this all happened for a wise purpose. I'm sure even President Merkley didn't know why he was doing what he was doing at the time, he was just following the Spirit's promptings. But it worked perfectly because if Elder Conrad had still been an Assistant it would have been a lot more hectic for President to have to call a new assistant mid transfer (the week before Zone Conferences, no less) and get a new Zone Leader in somewhere as well. So this all worked out perfectly. President is so inspired, it's incredible.

     Things in Springfield have been really good. A little bit slow, but they are picking up. There is a lot of major opposition that we are facing right now, but there are good things happening too. I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Goodale

Busy Week

Eeek!!! I'm so sorry that I forgot to post Elder Goodale's e-mail from last week, August 2, 2010). You'll find it below:
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     Hey! How is everybody? We had a super busy week this week. Tuesday we were on exchanges with Monett, Wednesday exchanges with Miami, and Friday we exchanged with the Granby Elders. Elder Anders, Elder Day, and I hardly had a chance to do any work together this whole week! It was really cool to go back to Miami on Wednesday for the first time in about 15 months. It was really cool too because there happened to be a ward party the night I went on exchanges there (we didn't plan it that way) so I got to see everyone in the ward! It was pretty cool. The work here is going well. Things have really been picking up here, we had a lot of really good new investigators this week and some awesome member referrals. Maria Figueroa and Richard Wilson both came to church on Sunday, Maria has a baptismal date for the last week in August and next time we see Richard we'll be setting a baptismal date with him. So things are going very well here. Definitely busy though. We've got 3 more exchanges this week, then the following week we'll have a couple more, plus Zone Conference to prepare for. So wer'e staying very busy. Hope you all have a good week!

New Area / Pictures

It was great to hear from Justin today; his e-mail below. We also received another digital camera card from him this past week. To the right here is one of those pics, of he and Elder Hirshfeld, taken back on April 21st. In the text of Justin's e-mail, below, is also a pic of his St. Robert district, taken July 14th. Then at the end of this posting are two videos that Justin took of the awesome storms they get in that area. To see all 34 photos and vidoes, check them out on Flickr.
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Dear Family,

     Hey everybody! How's your week been? Things are great here. Joplin 1st Ward has been a little slow for awhile now, but we've been working hard and have a lot of things going for us. We did set one baptismal date this week, her name is Maria, she's a member referral, she's 19. We are hoping to set a couple more dates this week as well. We've got a lot of building up the area still to do but things are going pretty well so far. We work really well together, and we've been laying the groundwork for a lot of great things to happen really soon. In answer to your questions about tri-panionships, it is pretty rare. It only happens when there are an odd number of missionaries in the mission, there will be one group of 3. So there is never more than one. There have been 3 or 4 times lately when there is an odd number so President Merkley has had a pair of Zone Leaders train one of the new missionaries coming out, so I've been lucky and have had that opportunity twice. Then this time there was an odd number and President Merkley just decided to have an extra Zone Leader I guess. So Elder Anders and I are kind of training Elder Day as a new Zone Leader. I'm guessing that a big part of it was that next transfer there are a whole bunch of Zone Leaders going home, so this way he doesn't have to call a huge number of new ones all at once. I don't know though. But yes, I have been extra lucky. You never know what you're going to get with President Merkley. :) Crazy stuff always happens when you're in leadership too. It's pretty exciting. :)

     That's just about everything... oh except that the 3 of us spoke this Sunday. Elder Day got up and spoke about the Restoration, then I gave a talk about the Book of Mormon (which I thought went well - I told the story of Jim Bird, the truck driver I told you all about a few months ago, and what effect the Book of Mormon had on him, and like everybody was crying. Including me. I love that story) then Elder Anders talked about Doctrine and Covenants section 4. The 3 of us had the whole Sacrament Meeting. Then next Sunday we are having a ward fast for missionary work. I think this was a great idea by Bishop Hoffman, it was a really good meeting, it built member trust a lot, and with the fast next week I'm really excited to see the work take off here. It'll be good. I hope you all have a great week! I love you!

Love,
Elder Goodale
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 Here's a video Justin took during one of their awesome storms.

And another one.

Transfer / New Address

Dear Family,

     Hey! How are you? My week has been great! I don't have a whole lot to report on, since transfers were this week, but it's been a good week. My last few days in St. Robert were awesome, the whole ward is so sad I'm leaving. Of course that's bound to happen after being in an area for 7 months, and with the amount of success we had there, I got really attached to a lot of members there, and vice versa. But Tuesday and Wednesday I was able to go around and say goodbye to most of my recent converts, and all of our awesome investigators. Wednesday, my last day in St. Robert, was amazing! We had 4 new investigators! And they were all really solid. First was an amazing woman named Jaquelyn, she's really humble and really prepared, she totally got everything and was just soaking it up. She's really excited to read the Book of Mormon and come to church, and ultimately be baptized. Then later that night we taught a couple named Eugene and Jessica, and their friend Justin who is living with them. They were also really really interested. Both of those cases we met tracting during the last couple of weeks. I'm really excited for Elder Ewert and Elder Barnett to work with them. There are a lot of really great things going on there. But now I'm here in Joplin! Here's my new address:

1705 S. Reinmiller
Joplin, MO 64801

     That will probably be my address until the end of my mission. :(

 

Elder Day, Elder Anders, Elder Goodale Joplin, MO

   Things are awesome here though, I'm really excited to be back in one of my old zones again. It's definitely different being in a real city for the first time on my mission, but Joplin 1st ward is a really awesome ward, and I'm really excited to be here. I'm in a threesome again, with Elder Sam Anders from Scottsdale, Arizona, and Elder Garrett Day, who came out here from Sacramento, California but spent most of his life in Las Vegas, Nevada. Elder Day is 6 foot 6, he's huge. Elder Anders and Elder Day are both really amazing missionaries, and the 3 of us get along really really well and we work really well together. This companionship has been perfect so far, and tons of fun. It's kind of interesting, the last 2 threesomes I've been in, both in St. Robert, were training situations, but this time all 3 of us are Zone Leaders together. I've never seen this before, but it's been awesome. I'm really excited for this next transfer. I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Goodale

Survived a Tornado / Transfer

Dad's Note: Man... Elder Goodale certainly had an interesting week; the tornado experience sounds pretty amazing! He will transfer this Thursday to Joplin, Missouri in the southwest corner of the state. I have put in four web links to information on the city and surrounding area. I am also putting in some pictures we scanned from a couple of months ago. I don't remember the story behind it, but you can tell that Justin ended up in a nice pool of mud! There are also a couple of baptism pics that I've put in; one of them at a river! The pics have nothing to do with where I've placed them in the text of his e-mail below.

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Dear Family,

     Hello! I can't believe it's already Monday again and I'm hear writing to you again! This week has just disappeared! I was on exchanges in West Plains Tuesday and Salem Thursday, then we also instructed at two different District Meetings this week, Wednesday in Houston and Thursday in Rolla. So we were all over the place, and it feels like this week didn't even happen. It's been a good week, though, we've found alot of good new investigators and things are really picking up again after a couple of pretty slow weeks. Things are actually going really well.

     The only sad thing is I won't be here to see it. :( I'm finally leaving St. Robert! After over 7 months here, I'm getting transferred to Joplin, MO (city website, Wikipedia entry, visitors bureau, Joplin Globe). It will be by far the biggest town I've served in on my mission, which is kind of funny considering it's not very big... (I think it's around 50,000, but that's just a guess) It's about 2 and a half hours from here, down in the southwest corner of Missouri. I'm really glad I get to stay in Missouri instead of going back down to Arkansas or Oklahoma. :) It's really weird though, this will most likely be my last area! I don't know what to think about that... So I'm not going to. :) It should be really fun though because way back in April-June of last year I served in Miami, OK, which is in the same zone, so I'll get to go back and go on exchanges there! My new companion is Elder Anders, who came out a transfer after I did. He's an awesome missionary, I'm really excited.
     So we had a pretty crazy experience yesterday...After church Elder Ewert and I split with two young men in the ward. Elder Ewert went with Rian Stroud, and they went out and worked in Richland for the day (another town in our area, about 15 miles west of St. Robert), and I stayed in the St.Robert- Waynesville area with Shawn Botti. He's an 18 year old recent convert who is getting ready to put his papers in in just a few months, and he comes out on splits with us almost every Sunday. Then we usually get another priest to go out with us to so we can split.

     So Shawn and I were out tracting and we got caught in a massive downpour several blocks from our car. By the time we got back to our car we were totally soaked all the way through. We had been warned there was a big storm coming, but it had rained super hard and then there was quite a bit of thunder and lightning at the same time (yes, we were out tracting in a lightning storm) so when it passed over us we thought that was the end of the storm. If it had been, that in and of itself would have been a pretty good storm. So we got in the car, dripping wet, and drove over to an investigators house. Shortly after we went in, the tornado sirens started going off, and during that time the other two called us from Richland and told us that the storm had just passed through where they were and was on it's way toward us, but it wasn't that bad. At least it didn't hit them hard... The sirens only lasted a couple of minutes, then they turned off.
  

A couple of minutes later, we went outside and the sky was a really nasty greenish-blue color that usually comes with tornadoes. Then we noticed a huge fishook type cloud above us that stretched across the whole sky and basically divided the sky in half. The best way I can think to describe it was kind of like a big upside down Nike Swoosh symbol above us. That also means tornado, in case you ever see one. It's kind of eerie, looking, it's really hard to describe, both the color and the fishhook, but when you see it you know. It just doesn't look right. So anyway we left and started driving to our next destination, watching the clouds as we went. We could literally see the two different fronts, one east of us and one west of us, both moving toward us (in opposite directions of course) and that big fishhook was kind of right in the middle.

     After just a couple of minutes of driving we saw one of the nastiest looking clouds I've ever seen (I didn't know at the time because it wasn't like the typical twister you think of when you think tornado, but I realize now that this was the tornado) moving right toward us. It was really really low, literally only about 2 stories above us (and dropping), we almost could have jumped up and touched it. It was moving very very quickly, and slowly rotating as it did so. It was kind of a sick feeling (but really exciting at the same time!) as this big spinning cloud came right over the top of us. Then immediately afterward we just got nailed by a big wall of water. The wind was all of sudden really strong, and it was raining like crazy, just coming in big sheets. Obviously my first thought was we need to get off the road, we can't be driving in this. We were driving right past a grocery store, so we quickly pulled into their parking lot. As we sat there watching the wind and rain, it grew very calm just for a few moments, then picked up again even stronger. We watched a big huge dumpster get thrown across the parking lot like a wad of paper, and that's when we started to get a little nervous. I then looked to my left to see a big box flying right toward my head. I just about peed my pants, but then it turned and flattened against the back end of the car. Somehow that left nothing but a little scratch, but then right after that we noticed all the shopping carts coming toward us! (Again, we are still sitting in the car) There were quite a few shopping carts, but luckily only one actually hit us, which was also pretty scary because it nailed the drivers side door, right where I was sitting (doing quite a bit of damage to the car). That was when we decided we needed to get inside. :)

     So we pulled up to the front of the grocery store (dodging another speeding shopping cart on the way) and ran inside just as a couple of nearby trees went down and part of the roof of the grocery store was torn off. We didn't get to watch anymore from inside, though, because they moved everyone back to the meat coolers at the back end of the store where it was safest. We didn't go in though, because we were still dripping wet (we got re-soaked as we ran from the car into the store) and we didn't want to go into the meat freezer that wet. That would not have been fun... The worst of the storm was already past though.
     So that was our fun adventure yesterday! Please don't worry or be scared at all, we are totally fine and really we were pretty safe. And we'll be sure to be inside before the storm hits next time. :) But that was our week. I love you all!

Love,
Elder Goodale

Damage to car from tornado

Happy 4th of July

Dear Family,

     Happy 4th of July! how is everybody? I was worried we may not get to email today because the library was closed for the 4th (everyone got a 4 day weekend) but luckily we were able to use the computer in the clerk's office at church. We just got back from Rolla where we were playing basketball with the rest of the district, it was a lot of fun. We did it a couple of weeks ago too, and we'll probably go again next week. This was a pretty crazy week. It started Monday, when we had to drive down to Tulsa for Zone Leader Council. This time was a special ZLC with Elder Lynn G. Robbins from the first quorum of the 70 there with us. He stayed in the mission home that night, so Tuesday morning before ZLC we got to eat breakfast with him and talk to him for awhile, which was really cool. Then we went to our meeting, where he instructed us for about 3 hours and just about blew us away! It was really amazing, the Spirit was so strong and we all learned so much. He taught us about agency and personal responsibility, and taking control of our lives. He totally called us all to repentance, but in a way that made all of us love him even more. That's a pretty valuable talent. :) After ZLC we went back to the mission home to eat lunch, like we always do, and he was there as well. After lunch he took the time to interview 4 or 5 of the Zone Leaders, and I had the privilege to be one of them. That was also a very neat experience. We got back to St. Robert late that night, then Wednesday morning we drove out to Joplin for Mission Tour, which is when he addresses the whole mission. That was also a really neat experience. He is very spiritual, without a doubt called of God. We got back from that late Wednesday night. Those were all awesome experiences and we learned so much, I came away a much better missionary and really a much better person over all. Then we finally got to get back to missionary work on Thursday. I'm going to be honest, the last couple of weeks have been pretty tough, we've had a whole lot of things fall through on us and our teaching pool is considerably smaller now. Of those that we are teaching, almost every one of them had gone out of town for the weekend when we got back (again, that's what happens at the military base on holidays, everything just shuts down). Those last 4 days were kind of slow. We still did manage to teach 15 lessons, but mostly we spent those 4 days doing a lot of tracting. It was really good, we found a lot of good people that I'm excited to start teaching. This week we've got a really hectic week, we've got exchanges with the District Leaders in West Plains and Salem, and we're going to be instructing at two different District Meetings this week, in Houston on Wednesday and in Rolla on Thursday. Then Saturday night is transfer calls!!! I hope you all have a great week! I love you!

Love,

Elder Goodale

Only 18 Lessons

"Only" 18 lessons in Elder Goodale's slow week. Man... I remember entire MONTHS on my mission where I had "only 18 lessons" - and felt it was a good month! We are continually amazed at how well the work is going out there! Enjoy Justin's e-mail from today, and pray for his safety as he travels to Tulsa and back this week - a lot of driving!
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Dear Family,

     Sorry this letter will have to be a little short, our preparation day is going to be cut short again because we have to travel to Tulsa (5 hours away) tonight, but we had a good week. The highlight, of course, was Devontae's baptism! It went really well. It was a pretty small service, but it was very good. The Spirit was very strong. Then I got to confirm him in Sacrament Meeting on Sunday, which went very well. Otherwise, this week honestly has been pretty slow.  It's been kind of tough. Mainly, though, it's just because all of our investigators are all out of town. Literally everyone. We only taught 18 lessons this week, which while still higher then most of the other areas in our zone is the lowest we've had in the 7 months I've been here. Usually it's up around 30. But that's alright. It just gave us an opportunity to do a lot of finding! Everyone is going to be out of town most of this week too, though we are also going to be gone. Like I said we leave tonight to go to Tulsa for Zone Leader Council, we'll stay the night and then ZLC will be Tuesday. We'll get back and have a couple of hours to work in our area Tuesday night, then on Wednesday we have Mission Tour with Elder Lynn G. Robbins from the First Quorum of the 70, so we'll be in Joplin all day Wednesday. It's going to be hectic. But then hopefully everything will be back to normal for awhile. We did have a couple of cool miracles this week. I'll mention one in particular. Last Thursday we were walking out of the Post Office and a woman pulled up next to us in her car and asked us "hey do you guys want to come over some time?" Seeing the surprised look on our faces, she asked "you are missionaries, right? Isn't that what you do?" So we talked to her a little bit more and got her information and everything, her name is Alissa Goble and it turns out that she just moved here about a month ago from San Antonio, Texas. She had several friends down there that were LDS who had talked to her about the church and she actually attended church with them 3 or 4 times. She met with missionaries, but not very many times before they moved. She's solid! She loves everything about the church. We talked to her about baptism the first time we taught her and she said it won't be any time soon because she wants to take things slow and make sure she's ready, but at the same time she's been thinking about it a lot and has already picked out who she wants to baptize her. She's really cool. I'm really excited for her. So we've got alot of great things going right now, it's just going to be slow until after the 4th of July weekend. I've got to get going though so we can get everything done, but I love you all! Have a great week!

Love,
Elder Goodale

A Semi-Normal Week

Dear Family,

     Hey everyone! We finally had a semi normal week, and it was really good. We've continued to go through the Part-Member list and try to contact everyone there, as well as most of the names on the ward roster as well. There are a lot of names that no one knows anything about, that have lived here for 3-4 years, sometimes even longer, that have never been contacted by anyone, and we've been able to get ahold of quite a few and actually found several more part member families in the process. So we've been having a lot of success with that, but at the same time it's slow work trying to find all of them and get things going that way. We've got about 10 kids right now that we've found (from 4 different families) between the ages of 10 and 17 who want to be baptized, the only hold back is that they all have parents that are less active and are just lazy and not being nearly as supportive as we'd like. So progress has been slower than anticipated with them... But we do have a baptism this Saturday with Devontae! He's really cool, he's totally set. We also were finally able to set a date with Shon this week, for July 31. It's kind of far off in the future, but he needs it. He's been actively coming to church for several months now, he sings in the ward choir, he helps out at every service project, he's awesome and super involved. He is just having a really hard time feeling ready to be baptized. We're never really able to teach him because his work schedule is so nuts, he works about 80 hour weeks, but he's one of the most active members of the ward. He is going through a lot of difficult things right now that he wants to get past before his baptism, but he's awesome. Just pray for him. Also please keep praying for the Taylors. They are leaving to go on vacation to Germany for a couple weeks, then as soon as they get back the dad of the family will be getting home from Iraq, and he's the only thing that will potentially hold the family back. We've been teaching the rest of the family and they are really progressing, hopefully he won't stop them. Saturday night we had a really good lesson, Sister Taylor had heard some things about the Word of Wisdom and had some questions about it, so we taught them the Word of Wisdom. Once she understood that it had come from God through his prophet, she had no problem at all. We invited her to live it and she said "of course! If that's what we need to do for our family to be together forever, than absolutely! Take it all!" So we took home with us everything that they had there that was keeping them from living the Word of Wisdom (and threw it away of course) and they've been doing awesome. This family is so golden! Even if it took some work to get them there... So please pray that her husbands heart will be softened when he comes home. We had interviews with President on Thursday, and that went really well. The whole Zone is doing really well, we've got a whole bunch of people that are close to progressing, please pray for us to continue to find the elect and for those that we are teaching to progress. I love you!

Love,
Elder Goodale

AP Splits & Mileage

Dear Family,

Oral Roberts University Tulsa, OK

     Hey! A tornado in Boise? That's crazy! I can't believe it! Was it a pretty impressive storm? Out here whenever we have tornadoes they are always part of huge storms with lots of thunder and lightning and hail and all that fun stuff. Did you get all that too? I love those big storms, that's one thing I'll really miss when I leave my mission.

How was the rest of your week? Wikipedia entry / city profile entry), about half an hour away, to see Rose Carter, who was baptized my first month here. She's been struggling lately because her boss won't let her have Sundays off, so she hasn't been to church in a while now. We had a great lesson with her, then we went to try to contact some of the part-member families in the Dixon area. Elder Ewert and I have really been working that list hard lately, that's really been our main focus. It's hard though because even though Dixon is such a small little redneck town out in the middle of nowhere, over half of our part-members live out there! And we very rarely get to work that area. Elder Anderson and I had a lot of success out there though. We found several that aren't too interested, a couple that aren't there any more, and a few that are really friendly, really great families. The most promising one was the Eshke's. Sister Eshke is in her 30s, and according to our records her husband is not a member, and they don't have any kids. They live REALLY far out in the sticks, even by Dixon standards, but we were glad we were able to find it. Sister Eshke was a little stand-offish at first, but as we talked to her and kind of built a relationship she really opened up to us a lot and ended up being really friendly and pretty cool. We also found out that she's divorced now, but she does have three kids- 17 year old son Cody, 15 year old daughter Sierra, and 12 year old son Tyrel. She let us in to talk to the kids and they are awesome! They are great kids, really smart, and they all want to be baptized. It's amazing how much success we've found using the part member list.

Oral Roberts University

At the same time that we were there, Elder Ewert was back in St. Robert and he finally got in contact with a family that ended up having a 16 year old daughter who isn't baptized but wants to be. Most of what we've found so far is just kids, actually mostly teenagers, but they need the ordinance of baptism just as much as anybody else! I've never worked with kids and teenagers and stuff on my mission, I've mostly only taught adults, so this is a new but very good experience. It's really interesting because a couple weeks ago we were praying about a goal for baptisms and Elder Ewert said he felt very strongly that he should set a goal of 19 before he goes home at the end of August. That's 2 transfers, or 3 months. I felt very good about it as well, so that's what we're working towards. Of course that's an unheard of number for our mission, a lot of Elders won't even get that their whole mission, but that's what we felt impressed to work towards and with all of these part members, it's going to happen. One prompting I did receive while I was praying about it a few days ago was that if we just stay in St. Robert and Waynesville, that goal isn't going to happen. It simply won't happen. The Spirit told me that if we want to see that kind of success that we need to branch out to the other towns, most notably Dixon and Crocker. St. Robert and Waynesville are right next to each other, St. Robert is right out the main gate of Fort Leonard Wood and Waynesville is right out the West gate. Most of our work has always been there, because of mileage constraints we've hardly touched those other towns (which are pretty far away). But we're going to start spending more time out there so pray for us that we'll be able to continue to have success in those areas.

Praying Hands

Friday morning we went and taught Amanda Magoon, who is still just waiting until her husband gets home from deployment before she can be baptized (which will be in July) and had a really good lesson with her and were able to resolve a lot of her concerns, then we went to teach the Taylor family. I'm so excited for them, they are really starting to progress. We've been teaching the mom Nicole, and their 3 kids: Philip, who's 15, Kimmy, who's 12, and Hunter, who is 7. They are really progressing well and falling in love with the church, the only real hold back is that her husband, who is deployed in Iraq, is pretty against the church. He's seen how much we've done for his family, though, and the changes they've made, and I think he's softened quite a bit. Please also pray hard for them. The biggest key is getting them converted enough and involved in the ward enough that when dad gets home from Iraq on July 10 (Andrew's birthday!!!) that he won't want to pull them away from it. Please pray that that will happen and that his heart will soften enough that he will be willing to listen when he gets home. We really need lots of prayer with this one. They are a really great family that will really make awesome members.

We taught them the Plan of Salvation Friday morning and that went well, then we raced off to Tia and Brother Spaulding's wedding. (she's the one who was baptized two weeks ago). That went really well, then we had to go to our apartment to get picked up by Elder and Sister Maughan (the senior couple assigned to Fort Leonard Wood) to go to Tulsa. A member in the Rolla ward let us borrow her van, and the whole district (us, the Maughans, the Sisters in Rolla, and the Elders in Salem) carpooled down there together. We stayed in members homes in Owasso (a suburb of Tulsa) Friday night, then Saturday morning we got to go to a special meeting with Elder Russell M. Nelson of the Quorum of the 12 Apostles! That was really special, we all got to go meet him and shake his hand and everything, which was a really cool experience. We also met Elders Garret W. Gong and Richard J. Maynes from the first Quorum of the 70, and heard them speak. It was a really amazing experience.

Then yesterday was church, and now we're here. This will actually be a full week of missionary work, so I'm excited. I love you all! Have a great week!

Elder Davis, Elder Jamison, Sister Tailor, Sister Hill, Elder Goodale, Elder Ewert

We had an awesome week. Thursday the Assistants were here to come on exchanges with us, I was with the new Assistant Elder Anderson. He's awesome. We've served around each other before and we both became Zone Leaders at the same time so over the last 6 months that I've been here we've gotten to know each other pretty well. He's a lot of fun and a great missionary. We took advantage of the unlimited miles the Assistants have in their car and went out to Dixon.

Love,
Elder Goodale

Oral Roberts University

Oral Roberts University

Oral Roberts University

Praying Hands

Praying Hands

Tornado!!!

Dear Family,

     Hey everybody! We had an awesome week. Transfers were Thursday, so Elder Richins went off to Tulsa and now it's just Elder Ewert and I. Back to two again. I still can't believe that I'm getting to stay here 7 months, I never thought I'd have 5 transfers in one area. I'm excited though, because things are going great. I can't believe how blessed we are, with the success that just keeps coming. Right now we have 3 baptismal dates, all set for June 26. They are all children from Part-Member Families (Alyssa, age 12, Anita, age 10, and Devontae, age 10). We also have several others that are very close to baptism, we are going to have several in July. The Taylor family came to church again this week, and it went really well. They came a couple of months ago, and didn't like it, but we've been working with them and we got them to come again this week and it went well. At least the kids really loved it. They are planning on coming next week as well. That's the mom, Nicole, then 15 year old son Phillip, 12 year old daughter Kimmy, and 7 year old son Hunter. Their dad is deployed right now, but he is supposed to get home the first week of July. We're going to be focusing a lot more on them the next few weeks, hopefully we can get them really involved in the ward and really into the church by the time their dad gets home, then we can baptize the whole family. They've really started to make a lot of progress lately. The last two weeks we've found a lot of new investigators that really have a lot of promise. I'm very excited about the next couple of months. The area has already been on fire (those 3 baptisms will make 16 since I've been here), but it's right on the brink of exploding even more. As I said, we've been really, really blessed. I just wish the time would stop going so quickly! We also had a fun experience on Elder Richins last night here on Wednesday... We finally had a tornado! This spring we've gotten so much less action then last year, I though nature was going to forget us this year. But we had a really great storm that night! We were actually over at the Taylor's house teaching them, which is good because they have a basement that we all went to when the sirens started going off. The tornado just touched down out in the woods on Fort Leonard Wood, so no significant damage from that, but we also got about golf ball size hail, a lot of wind, and well over 2,000 lightning strikes over the course of about an hour, including one awesome moment when we saw 6 different strikes at one time, all around us. It was as bright as mid-day. It was a really impressive storm, and as always very fun to watch. I love the weather out here! I think we're supposed to get some more storms tomorrow. Keep your fingers crossed for us. :)

Love,
Elder Goodale